The transportation of persons is a challenging task in all of its aspects. The airline industry has developed a particularly sophisticated computerized environment to help all the actors of this travel oriented industry managing the flows of passengers carried on various types of aircrafts and operated by numerous independent airline companies all over the world.
Central to this worldwide industry are a few global distribution systems (GDSs) that provide travel services to affiliated airlines and to all sorts of travel service providers in general, including the traditional and online travel agencies. Such a GDS is for example AMADEUS, a European travel service provider with headquarters in Madrid, Spain. The scope of GDS offered services is very wide. For airlines it includes all the aspects of schedule planning, reservation and booking of passengers on their aircrafts.
In spite of this sophistication, the reality of transportation services delivered by airline companies is that operational flight delays or cancellations are however frequent. A single flight or a network of flights may be impacted depending on the type of disruption encountered. For example, a mechanical difficulty may disrupt a single flight, while bad weather conditions may disrupt many flights. Also, air companies have sometimes to rearrange their network of flights, e.g., to reduce operational costs and to better adapt to the demand.
Whichever the cause of the disruption, the impacted passengers have generally to be re-accommodated quickly. Impacted passengers are all those that are booked on a disrupted plane, are already waiting or are on their way to an airport, or are on board of a plane to catch a disrupted connection flight. Re-accommodation is always a disturbing event for the passengers whose satisfaction is a prime concern for the airlines on which they fly.
Flight disruptions have thus a very high cost for the airlines which have to handle, often in a very short time, numerous disrupted passengers, sometimes thousands, when many flights are suddenly cancelled. Skilled personnel must become, unexpectedly, available to re-assign the disrupted passengers on other flights with a minimum impact in term of delays while attempting to offer them the same level of services as in the booked disrupted flights.
There is therefore a need for a new automated service to be provided by GDSs to airlines allowing them to handle in real-time the mapping of cabin and travel classes of disrupted passengers into the ones of the replacement flights.
This object of the invention must be achieved with the prime objectives of keeping clients of the airlines satisfied by offering them the same level of services in the replacement flights while minimizing the cost of the disruption for the airlines.
Further objects, features and advantages of the present invention will become apparent to the ones skilled in the art upon examination of the following description in reference to the accompanying drawings. It is intended that any additional advantages be incorporated herein.